International
Conference on Financing for DevelopmentDepartment of Public Information - News and Media Services
Division - New York

Monterrey, NL, Mexico
18-22 March 2002

19 March 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE BY FORMER UNITED
STATES PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

"I wished I had known then what I know now about
the third world", former United States President Jimmy Carter
said today at a press conference in Monterrey, referring to how little
Americans understood about how little they gave and how desperately
aid was needed.

The Monterrey Conference could serve to educate the
American people, he said. Also, the Conference might well stimulate
the rich countries to be more generous and encourage the developing
world to vastly decrease the corruption and waste in their countries.
At the same time, waste and corruption decreased on their own when
aid touched people on a personal level.

He said the greatest challenge was bridging the divide
between those nations that had everything and those whose citizens
were living in abject poverty. During a recent trip to Africa, where
he had visited some 10 nations with Bill Gates, Sr., he had seen first-hand
the lack of investment in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, for example.
That had been "a real eye opener in the field of health".

The United States gave one-thousandth of its gross national
product (GNP) to overseas development, while Europe and Japan gave
approximately three times that much, he continued. "We were all
shocked obviously by the tragedy that occurred in New York on September
11th in that savage terrorist attack", but in Africa alone, that
many people died every 12 hours of AIDS. And, much of that could be
prevented. Development assistance was critically important if it was
spent wisely and effectively.

Allocating funds for health for a particular disease,
whether malaria, river blindness or AIDS, however, was a different
story, he said. If a top official began to steal that money, he or
she was more likely to get caught because people would rise up and
demand that that waste be stopped. Improving the quality of someone´s
life meant development assistance was less likely to be wasted or
subjected to corruption.

Asked about United States President George Bush´s
proposal for increased aid to developing countries, he said he was
pleased at his statement and commitment. That had been a long-awaited
and dramatic statement, but it should be put in perspective. However,
the effective date would be in fiscal year 2004, while the needs were
urgent now. Also, part of President Bush's statement concerned the
need to meet certain criteria before that aid became available to
a particular country. It was important to be "generous and not
just demanding", he added.

Just 10 days ago, he said, he had visited the only clinic
in the Central African Republic, where 267 people were suffering from
advanced AIDS, most of them women with small children. There was "zero
medicine, zero treatment, zero programmes" for AIDS prevention.
The women had just come for a morsel of food to tide them and their
babies over for the next day.

He said that 90 per cent of the beds in the local hospital
in the capital city of the Central African Republic were filled with
AIDS victims. Now, if that country could not receive aid until it
proved it was efficient, it would never get the help it needed. "We
can´t expect a country to fulfil criteria in advance that might
be beyond its reach", Mr. Carter said.

A correspondent said that, notwithstanding President
Bush's promise of $5 billion, it seemed that the dominant United States
position was that trade was better than aid, and an unseen, but all-seeing,
hand of the market would cure all ills. What did he think about that?

Mr. Carter replied that the developed rich nations had
imposed trade restrictions on the poorest nations that far exceeded
any total aid that they gave. For instance, in agricultural protection
alone, "we cost the developing world three times as much as all
the overseas development assistance that they received from all sources".

He added that when anyone talked about increased trade
as a substitute for supplementing aid, they should look at how those
countries were prevented from trading. So, in addition to giving foreign
aid, the trade barriers that prevented countries from marketing their
only attractive natural resources or produced goods should be reduced.

Replying to a question about whether the United States
should pledge to give 0.7 per cent of its GNP to official development
assistance (ODA), he said, yes, but that was an unlikely prospect
now. Yet, the Europeans had pledged 0.39 per cent of their GNP compared
to the United States' one tenth of 1 per cent.

Asked whether Mexico's President Vicente Fox was a model
leader for the developing world, Mr. Carter said that President Fox
had done a good job, and his positive relationship with President
Bush would be helpful to his country.

He added that Mexicans and others should be given amnesty
or an opportunity to remain in the United States legally and continue
to do their vital work.

Responding to a question about farm subsidies, he said
that agricultural barriers had been reduced or eliminated with Canada
and Mexico and that had not hurt the American farmers. The next step
was to turn the hemisphere into a free- trade zone. Compensatory efforts
should be made when the export potential of the truly poor nations
was hurt.

When he was President, he replied to another question,
foreign aid had been between two- and three-tenths of 1 per cent.
As President, he had had a constant annual battle with the Congress
to increase that aid, pointing out that each dollar invested by the
United States benefited it to the tune of about $6. During the cold
war, he added, one purpose of giving assistance to an African nation,
for example, was to keep the Soviet Union from coming in and buying
their friendship with a higher level of assistance. At that time,
Congress was more receptive to foreign aid programmes. In terms of
agricultural subsidies during his Administration, those were probably
about the same as now.

Responding to a question about the recent United States'
decision to stop contributing to the United Nations Population Fund
(UNPFA), he said he was not familiar with that decision, but one factor
in the White House and Congress that seriously damaged health programmes
around the world was the preoccupation with the abortion issue.

Under Presidents Clinton, and George Bush, Sr. and Jr.,
there had been a very tight restraint on allocation by Congress of
funding for any programme involving family planning, if that could
possibly encompass abortion. Now, as a leader of a non-governmental
organization that invested half its efforts in the health field, he
saw the adverse effect of those restraints on public health. That
debate was still in its formative stage and had not yet been resolved.